Quay Note

Currachs, like upturned whales beached

as musical notation on the quay.

Those sleek, mussel shelled torpedoes

ready to cleave though

wavewalls, green  and white-tipped,

chasing schools of quick-silver with

hand-strung nets tuned to their scales.

Rhythmic fingers conduct these vessels

in ancient songs that harmonise

with an underwater chorus,

carrying the music booming deep through the years,

where the call and response of the tides

meets the Blasket sound of memory.

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No Going Back

Side by side they went down the road, the hedgerows crowding in as if eavesdropping on a private conversation. Clouds the colour of curdled milk sat threateningly over the heads of the man and the boy, the rain within contained by a thin membrane like the skin on cold porridge.

When do we get there?

Soon, soon. We’ll get there soon.

And what do we do there?

We’ll see, we’ll see.

The road went on. And, having no choice, so did the man and the boy. The road contoured round the rising hills like a hand gliding over a lover’s breast. In the far distance, a sunbeam broke out as if on day release and plucked out diamonds sparkling in the sand banks. The gleam couldn’t last and soon the gloom crowded in on the land again, the once lush fields brown and ragged like a sepia photo of tenement streets.

I’m getting tired now.

Don’t worry, its not so far. I think I can see the turnoff.

The road dipped, a polite bow before rising toward the horizon where further down a turning showed itself, shyly peeping from behind tall granite gateposts guarded by griffins prepared to shriek at unwary interlopers.

I don’t think I want to go there now. I want to go home. Please. Take me home.

We can’t, remember? I told you that. We talked about this only last week, don’t you remember?

Two magpies launched themselves from the trees, laughing in unison while the hooded crows looked on muttering oaths at having their silence disturbed. The trees swayed in the wind, holding up their branches as if to shield themselves from a punishing blow.

I’m scared. I want to go back. Take me home. Mammy will be missing us.

Ssshhh, ssshhh, don’t get upset. Wipe your eyes and blow your nose. It will be alright, don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Besides, Mammy isn’t there so we can’t go back.

Why not? We could always go back before, couldn’t we?

Not this time. This time there can be no going back. But don’t be scared, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.

The sound of gentle crying accompanied them as the road turned off onto the gravel driveway. The large house looked on in disapproval as the car drew up to the granite steps leading to the dark canyon beyond the oak door. Two starched-white nurses helped the old man up the steps.

Bye dad, I’ll see you next week.

The boy jumped back in the car and drove away.

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Drugs…Just Say No?

Is there a pill for every ill or is it the case, as the Verve would say, that the drugs don’t work? This piece in the Irish Times Weekend makes interesting reading. The sheer amount of pills being popped to combat mental illness is mind-numbing (non Xanax induced, presumably). Are we being over-prescribed or is it, as the IT piece mentions, a product of a more effective diagnosis of mental illness?

Almost 20 years ago, I checked into St. Vincent’s Psychiatric Hospital as an in-patient. Already looking at life through the fog of depression and depersonalisation I didn’t want to lose any further touch with reality and refused to be put under any drug regime. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t strapped into coat with buttons on the back and my therapy mainly consisted of talking which – for anyone that knows me – was excruciating. Word association games became the opening gambit of most of my sessions – but I got bored easily and these disintegrated into a sort of Two Ronnies sketch. But there were times when I was swimming in some deep emotional pools that I even wished for a dose of Prozac just to numb the pain. There were other times when I was asked to present my case to a class of student doctors and, looking back now, I realise that doing something so public at that stage was not a good thing, at least for me. My psychiatrist tended to treated me as a person but most of the students saw me either as a footnote in a series of case histories or, even worse, as someone with a particularly contagious disease – it’s a bit unnerving to see 20 pairs of eyes all staring at the floor.

What really kept me from disappearing any further into my own private cloud were two occupational therapists on their first assignment. I know that a psychiatric ward wasn’t the first choice for either of them but their sheer energy, enthusiasm and desire to make a difference meant that they saw us as individuals and not cases to be treated. They were able to drag us all down to the therapy room, even the most catatonic and, believe me, there were some patients that would make the Easter Island statues look manic. The therapy room was designed as a space to keep your hands busy and your mind calm – bit like a monastery. We made things – there was weaving and I probably know more about macramé than I ought. We had relaxation therapy, to this day the sound of the sea makes me both want to nod off and to kick a hippy and if I hear any more whale songs I’m joining the Japanese fleet. But the most useful part, not just for me, was the group sessions. Unlike the anally-retentive students, most of the patients shared their pain – from the manic, tourettes induced, expletive-ridden shouts to the mumbling, stumbling, half-whispers and grunts (mostly me).

And then there were the group outings. It wasn’t quite a McMurphy hijacking in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest but the number 7 bus into town on a Wednesday afternoon became our own version of the Great Escape, although I’m not sure how comfortable the other passengers were with getting up close and personal with this sort of care in the community. I remember we saw Ghostbusters in the Savoy after a show of hands in group therapy, “who wants to sit in the dark and laugh at Bill Murray telling dick jokes?” The more neurotic of us huddled down in our seats, cowering at the overacting and when the Marshmellow Man appeared there were shouts for mammy (probably mostly from me). Although, there was the time that a couple of us led a breakout after tea one evening, crossing the Merrion Road to the M1 pub like some scene from a Woody Allen sketch. It didn’t take long for the staff to find us, mainly because the bar staff spotted our hospital wrist bands, that and the fact that one of our more paranoid members locked himself in the bathroom (not me this time). Funnily enough, it was shortly after this that a few of us were released back into the wild and only had to turn up on day release. And, thanks to the caring staff, I left there with an ability to cope and two hand-made stools.

There are no easy answers when it comes to treating mental illness with drugs. I don’t use them and don’t think I need to but I saw some seriously disturbed people who wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed without some sort of medicinal intervention. But I also saw people who were given the totally wrong drugs that made them infinitely worse and set back their recovery in a big way. I think, in general, that we are over-prescribed drugs (and I know a couple of people in the pharmaceutical industry, so apologies for trying to reduce your profits) and sometimes it’s a bit too easy for doctors to issue a script for a pill. That said, the Irish Times piece is timely and hopefully will contribute to a broader debate on how we should treat people with mental problems. The first thing we need to do is treat them like people.

 

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Caro

“There are no words…”

“Language is inadequate…”

And yet, and yet there are words.

The sounds we make to remember you

form a cushion to ease the blow,

somewhere soft to rest our heads

as we reconcile ourselves to loss and regret.

The words that you gave;

encouragement, advice, aspiration, engagement

all conspire in an outwelling of emotion,

a rising tide that enables us to float

buoyed by your gentle presence,

infectious laughter and endless stories.

The sounds, the words, the language – all yours.

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Depression

I have depression. Its something I live with or rather its something that lives with me. Every now and again it wakes up, stretches and announces its presence. Its something I’ve had for so long that I can recognise when its about to wake up and stretch. Usually I can put it back to sleep again. But, sometimes, I can’t put it back to sleep. And then I feel like I describe in the poem below. And that’s when me and my depression fight. So far, I’ve won all the bouts. But there have been some split decisions. I’ve self-harmed. I’ve tried to take my own life, twice. But I’m still here, fighting.

Depression is an illness. Its a serious illness. Depression should be taken seriously, deadly seriously. Depression isn’t something that you can snap out of. Depression can’t be cured with a joke. Or a pint. Or by cheering up.

When I’m depressed I can’t talk about it.
When I’m not depressed I don’t want to talk about it.
That’s the invidious nature of depression.
I need to talk about it but I can’t.
I should talk about it but I won’t.
Its a solitary disease. It removes you from your family. It removes you from your friends. Its a disease that eats you from the inside. But its not a disease that shows up on any scan. Its a disease that destroys you from the inside. Yet, it leaves you outwardly intact. Its a disease. A silent killer. It kills with silence.

I have depression. But now I’m talking. I’m talking because of Robert Enke. A young, talented professional goalkeeper. A goalkeeper at one of the top clubs in Europe. One of the top clubs in Europe that didn’t want him. Enke was a solitary man. In a solitary position. And he was ill. Robert Enke took his own life two years ago.

I have depression. But now I’m talking. I’m talking because of Kate Fitzgerald. A young, talented businesswoman. A successful businesswoman. A young successful businesswoman who reinvigorated the Irish branch of Democrats Abroad. A young successful businesswomen who wrote incisively about depression and the stress of being a young successful businesswoman. Kate Fitzgerald took her own life in August this year.

I have depression. But now I’m talking. I’m talking because of Gary Speed. A young, talented football manager. A young talented man, negotiating his first steps in the minefield that is football management. A young talented man who appeared on television on Saturday. Who appeared happy. Gary Speed took his own life on Sunday.

Three lives. Three tragedies; for themselves, for their families, for their friends.

I have depression. But now I’m talking. I’m talking about Stan Collymore. A young man with a talent for talking. A young ex-footballer with a talent for writing. In the early hours of Saturday morning Stan Collymore wrote, coherently and bravely, about his depression. Stan Collymore is alive.

I have depression. But now I’m talking. These four people have encouraged me to talk. It is a coincidence that three of the four people are footballers. I could be talking about musicians, comedians, artists. It doesn’t really matter who I am talking about. It matters that I am talking.

I have depression. But it doesn’t have me.

If you have depression or if you know someone with depression, please talk. There is help out there, please access it – Aware, The Samaritans. Ask for help.
If you know someone with depression support them, be patient, get them help.

Fade to Black

I curl up,

arms around knees

and I wait.

The darkness spins me

like a top and

I revolve around my own axis.

A gyroscope with my eyes shut.

The faster I turn the less pain I feel.

Closed in tight.

Nothing can scar me.

As I twist I don’t feel the claws,

they make no mark.

The black shadow has no

substance and can’t touch me.

In my cocoon

I feel.

Nothing.

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Pieces of a Man – Gil Scott-Heron (1949 – 2011)

Dublin in the mid-1970′s wasn’t exactly a hotbed (or even a hot water bottle) for music. Punk had yet to make much of an impact and, while the likes of Thin Lizzy had a blazed a trail, the city seemed to be in the grip of  generic, wide-flared soft-rock – Stepaside, Bagatelle, Freebooze (anyone remember them?) – or trad, from the Fureys in the Wexford Inn to the tourist trap diddly of O’Donoghues.

The music we swapped in school (on vinyl, with the cassette tape being the napster of the day) ranged from Led Zeppelin to the cult of Jim Morrison. The guy with the most eclectic musical taste was Larry Comerford, or rather Larry and his two older brothers. From the MC5 to The Band, Dylan to Springsteen (especially The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle and Darkness on the Edge of Town) the Comerfords had good music bleeding out of their ears. But the one artist that I heard in their house that pulled me up short and made me think about the words was Gil Scott-Heron and the album Pieces of a Man.

Scott-Heron was like no-one I had heard before – genuinely angry, words spitting out of him with venom, a ghetto poet with a jazz back-beat (courtesy of Brian Jackson) trying to find justice in a cruel, uncaring world. Tracks like Home is Where the Hatred Is and Winter in America told of his alienation, his pain and his addiction. Scott-Heron made music for the oppressed, the ignored, the scared and the scarred – his people. But his music also crossed boundaries and generations, his words spoke a universal truth. This was poetry in action, long before John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, the manufactured anger of The Sex Pistols or the political fury of The Clash. Scott-Heron’s poetry wasn’t lyrical, it didn’t really capture beauty in any classical sense, rather it encapsulated the banality of living in desolate urban landscapes, the casual swinging of a cop’s nightstick, fathers and mothers abandoning their children, living in shooting alleys, crawling in the gutter. The genius of his words was that no matter how bleak they were they made you empathise, and made you angry even while sitting in a comfortable middle-class suburban armchair. He made you care and for any writer that has to be the highest accolade.

While the albums had a power, it was as a live performer that Scott-Heron really came into his own. He annexed the stage, towering over the audience yet he had such a low speaking voice for all his harsh words that people hushed (mostly) to hear him as he interwove his songs with anecdotes about his life, his day or just riffed on the months of the year being in the wrong place. I first saw him live in Band on The Wall in Manchester sometime in the mid-1980s, a mainly reggae club on the edgier side of town in those days (alas now part of the gentrified Northern Quarter, whatever the fuck that is). Walking in the door there was no mistaking the kind of smoking going on. Beer was served strictly in large bottles and coke only came with Jack Daniels or a rolled up pound note. Through the smoke, Gil Scott-Heron strode, totally self-contained and played a set blistering in its political integrity. Even the most blissed out stoner stood up and shook the fog out of their brains that night, it was one of the most energising performances I’ve had the pleasure of seeing.

I’ve seen Scott-Heron live a few times since then, some good and some not so good. His battles with addiction have been well documented and affected him for a long time in the 1990s and into the new millenium. But he was back to his biting, scathing best with his latest release I’m New Here with an added mellowness befitting his maturity and his gig in the Pod in May was possibly the best I’ve seen him play since that first time in Manchester. Its just a shame he didn’t get a chance to enjoy his renaissance. Go softly Gil, and know that you’ve left behind a righteous anger.

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River Reflections

The sun gives a nudge waking the boy and dog

as the dog stretches the boy takes down the rod.

Through the garden, spring green with the sun

glinting from grassy dew, a globe in each drop

reflecting the passing of the boy and the dog.

Over the pitted tarmac, an imprint of every

sheep in Wicklow sheared down the side.

The boy over the gate, the dog jumps through,

onto a track untainted by wheels, dwindling down

to a youthful skittering stream.

Over the small stone bridge, the water under

as transparent as the achingly blue sky,

the gorse reflecting a blinding sun.

The boy treads carefully over soft bog,

light steps onto unsteady clumped reeds.

One false move and its into the cloying muck,

sucking deep, like quicksand on The Virginian.

The dog bounds ahead, stops, waits.

The track ends at the abandoned house

whose caved-in roof is an old person’s mouth.

Another gate to pass before green gives way to blue.

There is a poison on the land and

the rabbits, plagued with wide white eyes,

melt away from the dog. Arthritic limbs

carrying them deep into self-dug graves.

A fox watches, keen eyed, not enticed by

rotten food or scared of a small knight armed

with his lance and trusty mastiff.

The fox lollops off, tail erect ready to

brush off death under a hunter’s moon.

The boy and the dog both scent the water,

steps quicken, anticipating.

The boy baits the hook while the dog

watches, ears pricked ready for

the first splash into the river.

The man and the young boy with

careful steps over well-trod ground

The man lifts the boy over the lapsing gate.

No rabbits. No fox. No dog,

but the sheep encroach everywhere.

The young boy runs, each step a wave

over rocks as the stream gallops alongside

in full spate down to the river.

The young boy baits the hook,

casts into the still water at the river’s bend.

The man looks into the water

and sees, reflected back,

a boy and a dog.

Watching.

Waiting.

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Factory Town

Tight hipped houses densely packed together

like those soldiers from a Napoleonic war,

with front doors square on

to the enemy across the street.

And when the factory whistle blew

the doors exploded out

loosening their charges onto cobbled streets.

The sparks from clogs lighting the flints

of a thousand muskets.

And when the air cleared and smoke settled

the houses breathed in

preparing themselves for a repeat volley

when the day shift ended.

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Bloggers Book Club – The Reader

Its every teenage boys (wet) dream. You’re shovelling coal as a favour for a good-looking, older woman when she tells you to get out of your dirty clothes and step into the bath. From innocence to experience with just one bar of soap. What follows is not just a description of young, requited lust but also an attempt at analysing the roles that a certain generation of the German population played in the Holocaust.

Schlink achieves the first part quite well. The protaganist, Michael Berg, comes across as an almost stereotypical lust/love-sick puppy while never really managing to engage emotionally with Hanna or she with him. Hanna is depicted as a strong character, using Michael, not just for his body but for his mind. Michael’s reading to Hanna conjures up worlds of imagination that would ordinarily be denied her. However, Hanna remains emotionally detached and Schlink does not seem to develop her beyond her difficulties with the written word.

It is in the second analysis that the book tends to fall down. The book is too emotionally detached to allow the reader (sorry) to engage with Michael’s angst and inability to connect with any other character in a meaningful way. Hanna is a bit like Bertie Ahern in her teflon-like ability not to let anything stain her. She appears to be all surface and no depth, meandering through the various horrific ordeals that she witnesses as if she is watching some sort of home movie. Hanna just does not come across as believable, willing to sacrifice everything, including children’s lives just because she can’t read (that should have a spoiler alert but if you’re the only person on the planet that doesn’t know this then apologies) although her reason for leaving her well paid job in the Siemen’s factory does ring true. Michael is just as removed as Hanna. He does get a bit upset when she leaves him but that lasts for about a page and he is back to his normal disposition of being an observer of life rather than a participant.

Schlink may have wanted the character of Michael to be some sort of removed witness but he really should have fleshed him out and given him some sort of humanity – if the woman I loved was on trial I think I might have shown a tad more emotion than a slight frown on the forehead. And I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in the court room knowing that I had some vital evidence that could have made a difference to her case. The book is not successful in dealing with the wartime role of a generation of German parents as Michael never really engages with his own mother and father about what they did during the war – Michael seems more concerned about his own reaction to his feelings than any feelings for anyone else, including his family. Nor does the book deal with the realities of 1960s Germany, which saw the birth of a radical youth both artistically and politically that really tried to hold their parents to account for what had happened before, during and after the war – such as the New German Cinema.

Check out the other members of the BBC for their views: Lily, Marian, Marie, Lorna, Val, Jenn, Edie, Catherine, Jenny, SusanC, Winifred, Ann, Susan, Dee and Tommy

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Happiest Days of Your Life

Submitted to Big Tent Poetry

Also submitted to Writers Island.

 

Happiest Days of Your Life

A swift fist to the head and onto the tarmac

knees skinned raw, black flakes

embedded in the cuts.

A grey-uniformed misshapen sack

of shaking limbs and snot trails on

cracked skin. Curled up tight,

a comma,

but nothing could pause this sentence.

Red blooded hands that penned your pain,

shuddering breath that couldn’t restrain

that whelping voice.

And everyday, it seemed, he came back

for his pound of flesh and left it

scraped across the yard.

Like a dog marking its territory

but it was your leg the piss ran down.

Scabs grew on scabs until they were armoured plates

and he became bored with the passive response.

The shaking stopped when he led his pack away

to rip and tear at some other stray,

until they too could roll over and play dead.

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